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Sign the Bakken Pipeline Pledge of Resistance

The potential trigger for our Bakken Pipeline Pledge of Resistance is if work begins in earnest on the Bakken Pipeline across Iowa, which became a reality on Monday, June 6 when the Iowa Utilities Board voted 2-1 to authorize construction.

Our first action under the Bakken Pipeline Pledge of Resistance is scheduled for Wednesday, Aug. 31, with a peaceful nonviolent action training in Pilot Mound beginning at 9 a.m., and an action from approx. 1-4 p.m. at an undisclosed location.

You can pledge to participate in actions — or, you can pledge to support those taking direct action.

We’ll need many volunteers to help organize these actions, and funds to help produce trainings so local leaders and activists can get the tools they need to organize an action near them.

The most important thing for our Pledge of Resistance is that all of us are ready to spring into action when needed, and that the threat of mass civil disobedience to block the Bakken Pipeline becomes credible, known and continues to grow.

Over the past two years, landowners, farmers, tribes and environmentalists have done everything possible to stop the Bakken Pipeline through legal, legislative and official means, and through all types of public actions — including a Spirit Camp blocking the pipeline created by the Standing Rock Sioux; a 500-mile relay run organized by Lakota youth; a 400-mile walk along the length of the Iowa stretch of the pipeline by Bold Iowa director Ed Fallon; and numerous actions by Iowa CCI and the Bakken Pipeline Resistance Coalition.

Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (ICCI), 100 Grannies for a Livable Future and CREDO Action have signed on to support the Pledge of Resistance.

We are at the point where men and women of conscience must step forward. In the tradition of other great American struggles for freedom, from the Boston Tea Party to the March to Montgomery for Voting Rights, to the Farm Crisis when farmers stood with their neighbors to block foreclosure auctions, we are asking people to stand for what we believe is right through acts of nonviolent civil disobedience to stop the Bakken Pipeline.

As was the case when over 100,000 Americans signed the pledge to resist the Keystone XL Pipeline, now is the time for us to pledge to resist the Bakken Pipeline. (5)

We ask you to commit, should it be necessary, to engage in serious, dignified, nonviolent civil disobedience that could get you arrested.

Specifically, we are asking you to pledge, if construction of the Bakken Pipeline begins across Iowa, to either:

Come to one or more designated locations and risk arrest to physically stop pipeline construction, or

Join with others who are supporting those risking arrest by volunteering or donating to assist with these actions, and amplifying their message by sharing them with your own personal networks.

If you are able to pledge to participate in taking direct action, it is impossible to say exactly where our action will be most needed and most effective. This is and will remain, by design, a moving target. If you are able to commit to risk arrest during an act of nonviolent civil disobedience, we ask you to sign this pledge with the understanding that, when called upon, you will do everything possible to join the landowners, tribes, and others who are in this fight for the long haul.

If built, the Bakken Pipeline will produce carbon emissions equivalent to fourteen new coal-fired power plants. If the pipeline breaks and leaks (it’s really just a matter of time), it will occur in the Mississippi River watershed, which is the water lifeline for a huge portion of our country.

This decision affects all of us, wherever we live. So we want to engage everyone who cares about protecting our land, water and climate to join our efforts to stop the Bakken Pipeline.

You shouldn’t make this pledge lightly. We certainly don’t ask lightly. We ask in the belief that there are tens of thousands of people out there who feel as strongly as we do, who believe that these circumstances call for extraordinary action, and who want to be part of that action in their community.

And we ask with the faith that those who commit to participate and organize actions will participate only in the most dignified manner.

After all, we are the conservatives, standing up for a safe and secure future for our families. It is those we protest, those who profit from poisoning our water, who violate our property rights, and who are radically altering the chemical composition of our atmosphere — and the prospects for survival of humanity — that are the radicals.*

Just as we were successful at stopping Keystone XL, we need to be successful against the Bakken Pipeline.

More Actions

On Wednesday, Feb. 22, Bold Action Teams (BATs) will mobilize for direct action across Iowa, targeting officials and businesses that have aided and abetted construction of the Dakota Access pipeline. WHY: The Dakota Access pipeline isn’t finished. Politicians, public officials and businesses who’ve supported it need to hear that the pipeline is wrong for Iowa […]

Many Iowa farmers and landowners in the path of the Dakota Access “Bakken” Pipeline have been forced to surrender their land against their will for the pipeline, because of the abuse of “eminent domain” law by the state of Iowa. The law of eminent domain was originally intended to enable the construction of large projects […]